A NAND flash memory is known as one type of a nonvolatile semiconductor memory device. The NAND flash memory comes to be used in various electronic devices and it is desired to reduce the manufacturing cost and enhance the yield thereof. Therefore, recently, reducing of the manufacturing process and a device for shrink of the circuit scale are daily studied as the elemental technique.
The NAND flash memory includes a memory cell array having a plurality of electrically rewritable EEPROM cells arranged in a matrix form and a row decoder that transfers voltages to a plurality of word lines arranged in the memory cell array. The memory cell array is configured by a plurality of blocks that are data erase units.
Row decoders may be arranged on both sides of the memory cell array in some cases. Since the row decoder transfers various high voltages to the word lines, large-size MOSFETs are used. Therefore, the circuit area of the row decoder becomes larger and, as a result, the circuit area of the NAND flash memory increases.